ION President Christopher HegartyGPS civil signal design innovator Christopher Hegarty has been elected 2008-9 president of the U.S.-based Institute of Navigation (ION). Hegarty is the director of spectrum management for the MITRE Corporation’s Center for Advanced Aviation System Development, based in McLean, Virginia, USA.
Founded in 1945, ION is a professional society for military and civil engineers, students, and others interested in air, space, marine, land navigation, and position determination. It is affiliated with the International Association of Institutes of Navigation.
GPS civil signal design innovator Christopher Hegarty has been elected 2008-9 president of the U.S.-based Institute of Navigation (ION). Hegarty is the director of spectrum management for the MITRE Corporation’s Center for Advanced Aviation System Development, based in McLean, Virginia, USA.
Founded in 1945, ION is a professional society for military and civil engineers, students, and others interested in air, space, marine, land navigation, and position determination. It is affiliated with the International Association of Institutes of Navigation.
Hegarty has made important contributions to civil aviation augmentation of GPS. He served as the Federal Aviation Administration’s GPS modernization project leader in 2000 and was technical advisor to the U.S. government in a number of international forums working on the compatibility of GPS with other GNSSes.
Earlier, he developed a technique to provide accurate corrections for rapidly varying GPS errors over low data rate channels, one used today with the FAA’s Wide Area Augmentation system (WAAS). His other contributions include studies on GPS topics ranging from atmospheric effects to cost-benefit studies of alternate GPS-based landing systems.
He has been editor of ION’s quarterly journal, Navigation, since 1997 and received the organization’s Early Achievement Award in 1998 for his work on improvements to the civil GPS signals. In 1999, he was a recipient of MITRE’s President Award for his civilian GPS improvement work.
Hegarty was elected in January at the ION National Technical Meeting in San Diego, California, USA.
